John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry

Audience Prize Winner
Mab Jones

 

Cardifference

(italics in a strong Cardiff accent)

I say tomato, you say tum-AH-toe
I say potato, you say spud
I shop at Sainsburys, you shops at Tesco
I can’t stand their value brand
But you can’t get enough

Between us there’s a difference
I’m middle class – you’re not
My family think that you’re a dunce
Yours think that I’m high maintenance
But viva la Cardifference!
We’re going to tie the knot

I play the clarinet, you plays Nintendo
I like the theatre, you prefers the box
I admire Fred Astaire, you acts like Rambo
Particularly in the bedroom with me
Though I wish you would take off your socks

Our love inspires incongruence
They say we shouldn’t wed
Your family hates intelligence
Mine hate your constant flatulence
But viva la Cardifference!
We get on well in bed

I read the Telegraph, you reads the Metro
I’d like a country house, you gorruh council flat
I’ve got a PhD, you’ve gorrun ASBO
When we go out if people shout
You swing your baseball bat

At times I feel ambivalence
You’ve got a nasty streak
I’ve seen your taste for violence
You’re put blokes in the ambulance
And even punched my face in once
For giving too much cheek
But love, is love, is love, is love…
So viva la Cardifference!
The wedding day’s next week

 

Flagging

The firebreathing dragon now barely breathes at all.
Sometimes you can hear it in the hwup of a flag
Or the fingering whisper of an old poem;
Sometimes you’ll catch it in a long and winding cliché
Or high on a lonely platitude.
Sometimes in a scent of music. Sometimes in a farting echo.

But you have to strain. The sound is weak.
A faint thread in the muffled mist – weak purl
From a throat grown thin as a knitting needle.
Listen hard, but all your ears will grasp
Is the odd, dropped stitch of a sound
That links us now to nothing but a vague remembrance.

Remembrance: of a red flame on a green hill.
Red for blood and battle, the deep arteries of our heritage;
Green fresh and wet as a wound. Remembrance
Of the fire-birthed beast, wild and intemperate,
Its back a wall of daggers and its tongue a sword,
And when it roared it was in a voice simultaneously singeing and singing.

Now the creature this country was lies like a lung collapsed.
A plastic bag, ripped and tossed: a carrier
Of some wasting sickness. With broken daggers and blunted sword,
It lies dim in its hollow and rasps its last.
The elemental dragon, once dangerous as an atom,
Sinks and fades like a dying sun, our country’s dying past.

 

Welsh Wool  

(in a lilting faux-Welsh accent)

Oh, the fellas they like a girl with long hair
They love to run their hands through it
But their tastes change when it comes to down there
That hair’s not nice when they chew it

Some girls are fuzzy, some girls are furry
Some girls are like a rainforest
Some hair is straight but mostly it’s curly
And Welsh girls have got a lot of it

Maybe it’s cos, just like the sheep
We need our wool to keep warm in
Maybe it’s cos with our valleys so deep
We need bush in case the rain’s pouring

I don’t know why, we’ve just got a lot
Welsh girls look bad in a thong
Unless they take off the hair that they’ve got
It really depends where they’re from

I mean, valleys girls just love their curls
Their hair grows wild and flaxen
But city girls don’t hide their pearls
They prefers a waxin’

In Swansea they shave it, in Tenby they save it
In Cardiff they take it all off
In Merthyr they shape it, in Rhondda they drape it
Down either side of their crotch

In Rhyl they prefer a tiny moustache
In Aber a beard’s the in thing
In Cwmer they pluck but are prone to a rash
In Newport they add lots of bling

In mystical Pembroke they shape every follicle
Into a glyph that is highly symbolical
In Milford Haven the girls prefer shavin’
They leave just a few hairs there gently wavin’

Up in Caernarfon any male visitor
Will find the girls smooth with a hairy perimeter
In Flint it’s the fashion to blow-dry it straight
In Gwent they tie beads in to make it ornate

There is a style to suit every passion
From silk smooth to long pony tails
Just bear in mind that whatever the fashion
You’re welcome, and will come, in Wales.